What’s the difference between “persistent” and “perpetual” shopping carts?
Persistent Shopping Carts
Persistent shopping carts save a customer’s cart contents across sessions through “persistent cookies.” A cookie is a small text file stored on a user’s computer. The cookie can be set to expire after a few minutes, a number of days or even years unless they are wiped out by the user’s browser or anti-spyware programs, or the user does not accept cookies.
For example, if the customer bookmarks a product on Monday by saving it to cart, and returns on Sunday to purchase, she doesn’t have to locate the product again. This is a nice customer service feature that can save sales. Some users, based on experiences with other sites, might assume your site uses persistent shopping carts, and upon returning to an empty cart, be too frustrated to even bother re-locating the products.
Amazon even reminds you […]
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Being in a wheelchair, I’m not able to shop in every retail store. Sometimes stores have a few steps outside the door, or have levels only accessible by stairs or escalator. Others have aisles too narrow for my chair, or shelves too high to reach. But I can access any e-store without a problem. It’s not that easy for visually impaired shoppers, illiterate and those who can see but do not have full hand function.
I came across a really eye-opening article in the February 2009 edition of Internet Retailer, (accessible online or as a reprint at Essential Accessibility) titled “Seeing the Light.”
The article describes the available technologies to bring online retail sites up to par for disabled users of all kinds. Visually impaired users can use screen readers like JAWS, Window-Eyes, BrowseAloud and IBM’s Easy Web Browsing. People with limited hand function can use “radar mouse” […]
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Meghan Keane from eConsultancy reported recent findings from Webcredible’s “ecommerce persuasion poll.” Of 1300 online shoppers surveyed, the top reason shoppers purchase from one website over another is seller reputation (28%) followed by price (26%).
Seller reputation - 28%
Price - 26%
Website look and feel - 16%
Website ease of use - 15%
Special offers - 4%
Delivery factors - 3%
Appearance in search listings - 2%
Retailers must realize persuasion and conversion is not all about pricing and landing page testing, but communicating trust.
How do you demonstrate your e-store is reputable?
If your retail brand is a household name, you’ve got a strategic advantage here. But if you’re not famous, you can still be seen as trust-worthy. We have discussed the importance of clear value propositions, still they alone are not enough to persuade today’s Google savvy Internet shopper. Whatever you claim about yourself is only marketing until it can be verified by customer […]
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A common ecommerce mistake is choosing a software provider before working out your requirements thoroughly. This applies to any software - not just ecommerce platforms but CRM software, BI tools, ERP systems etc.
If you choose your delivery method before you have a clear understanding of what your site or system needs to do at launch and 3, 5, 10 years down the road (as best you can predict) you may find yourself boxed in to a solution that can’t do what you need it to, or facing a development timeline and cost that you didn’t bargain for.
Last August, Bernardine Wu from FitForCommerce presented a webinar The Art and Science of Choosing Ecommerce Technology and shared her tips for requirements gathering and prioritization:
Define them at a detailed, feature-by-feature level
Create use cases and user personas
Include systems, data and processes your eCommerce system will integrate with
Create workflow designs, screen mockups […]
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It’s always fun to stumble across a Google test. Phillip Lennsen over at Google Blogoscoped posted today about a new Product Ads feature in the Google Affiliate Network, so this may be part of the testing for that. The screen shot below shows two sets of shopping results on a standard Google SERP for “crocs mammoth.” The lower shopping result set is the often seen “one box” area powered by Google Product Search feeds, but the upper set is something we haven’t seen before.
The first two links go directly to Shopping.com. The last goes to Campmor but it is a Shopping.com network link. It’s hard to know for sure if this is unique to Shopping.com at this time or if more
searches would eventually result in content from other sites, but about
a dozen queries yielded nothing but Shopping.com links. Some went to
Shopping.com product pages while others went directly to the
advertiser’s […]
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Cross-selling and upselling is a popular tactic among online retailers in hopes of increasing average order value, items per sale and improving customer service with relevant suggestions. Amazon shared that cross-sells were responsible for 35% of its sales in 2006! According to the e-tailing group’s 8th Annual Merchant Survey Report (of 190 ecommerce executives), 55% of retailers will include cross-selling and upselling in their merchandising activities this year.
But cross-selling and upselling is one of the most difficult activities to do well and effectively measure, as evidenced in the e-tailing group’s findings:
Cross-sell/Upsell in Shopping Cart, Conversion Rates:
Less than 1% conversion - 8% of retailers
1%-4% conversion - 16% of retailers
5%-10% conversion - 9% of retailers
More than 10% conversion - 3% of retailers
Don’t know conversion rates - 44% of retailers
Don’t merchandise in shopping cart - 20% of retailers
Cross-sell/Upsell on Product Pages, Conversion Rates:
Less than 1% conversion - 5% of […]
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The annual Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition is happening in Boston this week, and while Elastic Path is not there this year, we have a ton of video evidence of our visit last year as Jason Billingsley made his rounds of the trade show floor interviewing a wide range of ecommerce vendors.
One must-see video if you’re a manufacturer is Jason’s interview with Shopatron’s CEO Ed Stevens:
Can’t see video?
One of the biggest roadblocks for manufacturers when selling online is channel conflict. Many manufacturers have their hands tied when selling direct to consumers because their retail partners may retaliate (or retailiate?) To handle channel conflict issues, manufacturers’ website either sell no product, a limited product line or just accessories to keep retail partners happy. With 50-60% of customers looking for branded product beginning their search at the manufacturer’s website - that’s a lot of missed opportunity for both the […]
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Microsoft announced today that Ciao in the US will cease to exist as of July 1. Feeds will no longer be processed and the Ciao.com domain will redirect to Bing Shopping.
This pretty much ties up to the MSN consolidation in the US. Ciao will no doubt continue to exist in Europe. The real question is if and how they will more formally integrate Ciao with Bing in Europe. Right now it just redirects from Bing to Ciao, which is a little confusing from the user perspective, but maintains the SEO advantage of the already popular sites and leaves intact the social aspect of Ciao as well. I imagine the Ciao US social network never grew significantly, but the European network is probably pretty substantial, so Microsoft won’t want to lose that aspect. We often see for sites with more of a social focus such as Ciao that the unique visitor […]
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